Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Shoemaker-ized 375 Ruger Alaskan

Here are a few photos of my black Ruger Alaskan 375 Ruger.

I got rid of the POS Hogue stock, replaced it with a factory synthetic, SteelBedded, front sling swivel moved to 45* on tip of forend, and added one of Phil Shoemaker�s Picatinny rails to the forend so I could mount my 500-lumen Surefire Scout Light with Larue QD mount, just what the doctor ordered for peeling a bear off of the meat pole at 3 AM, or walking out on a trail at night in grizzly country with a pack full of meat strapped to your back. Best addition I�ve ever made to any of my rifles. And for those that are bound to point out, yes, I am fully confident in my ability to articulate why, where and when, if I have a light attached to my rifle.

Other than that, I added a pair of Alaska Arms, LLC QD rings and a Leupold FXII 4x33 with Heavy Duplex reticle - nice, simple, tough, and light. A 6-round butt cartridge carrier, and a Specialty Outdoors Products Ultimate Rifle Sling - if you haven�t tried one of these, do yourself a favour and get one - you won�t go back.

It lives on a diet 270 grain Barnes TSX fueled by 82.0 grains of Ramshot Big Game and Fed215 primers for 2728 fps average.









So far it�s accounted for two elk - the biggest one, a nice heavy 6x6 from last year, shown above - Green scored 332 even, net 320 6/8, just made the BC Book. We're going to be trying for number 3 in a few weeks. For scale, I'm 6'2"/260 lbs. The 270 gr TSX broke both shoulders at 217 yards and was recovered just under the hide on the off-side. Cleaned it off and weighed it when I got home - 269.3 grains, and a perfect four-petal mushroom as shown below.



[img]http://i770.photobucket.com/albums/xx342/jcinbc/P1010081.jpg[/img]

Anybody who doubts the value of a light on a big bore hasn't tried one, or walked around in the pucker brush.



.416 Rem. I particularly like this light because the switch is a push button on the rear that I can easily push with my index finger as I mount the gun to my shoulder.

Can't be a Shoemaker...doesn't have Rustoleum paint all over it :-)

I love those Alaska Arms rings/bases but I have to study up on your sling a bit more......don't recall ever seeing one.

It's an excellent sling - very comfortable, keeps the rifle tight to your side, multiple carry modes, and best of all, the sling/rifle WILL NOT slip off of your shoulder - it stays where you put it better than anything else that I've tried.

You've got me on that one

jaycee,
It looks like your scope is mounted 90 degrees off from where it belongs (the windage knob is where the elevation knob should be). Is there a reason for this that I don't know about.

Good looking rifle!

While I am not jaycee, my guess is that it is intentional to keep the windage turret out of the way of loading ejection. It always seemed to me that the placement of scope turrets favored LH ejecting rifles.

I speculated that that was the reason for it but I never actually saw a scope mounted that way. I'm curious if many folks do this to try and ease loading and help thwart ejection problems. I must say though, I have shucked a lot of brass from bolt action rifles and don't ever recall a windage turret hindering ejection unless it was a target knob

How did you mount the rail, in the stock.

Just like Utah708 said, it's to keep the turret out of the way of loading/ejection. Actually, for myself anyway, it's pretty much to keep it out of the way during loading - it's amazing how much a windage turret in it's "normal" placement encroaches into the loading/ejection port. I mount all my scopes this way.

I used a Mesa Tactical 8 1/2" (cantilever) Picatinny Rail for a Remington 870 as it was available and the radius for the top of the receiver works well with the rifle barrel, and shortened it to suit.

I attached the Picatinny rail to the barrel with some of that two-sided foam "tape" that's used for removeable coat hooks, etc, and played with it until the flashlight beam was centered with the iron sights. I then hogged-out the front of the stock so it would not touch the rail when the barreled action was bolted into the stock. All that was left was to mix up and dye some Acraglass and butter-up the stock and portion of the picatinny rail that's inside the stock. I masked-off the section of pic rail outside of the stock, and used Kiwi shoe polish as a release agent on the metal. It actually went pretty slick from start to finish.

If I were to do it again, I think I would use two thicknesses of the foam tape. As mine sits now, there's probably 1/16" of clearance between the rail and the barrel - it hasn't been an issue to date, but I think I'd prefer around 1/8" clearance.

Great looking rifle and I especially like the Rustoleum effect on the facial shot

Thanks for the compliment on the rifle. I think I'll leave the "facial shot" alone....

How did you make sure that the rail was aligned with the center of the bore and not the outside of the barrel? That was the trickiest part of my installation, and there is probably a more elegant solution than mine.

Nothing scientific, just eye-balled it - my rifle was already sighted in with the iron sights, so I just made sure the iron sights were in the center of the illumination pattern. I found this easier by shining the flashlight on a nearby wall rather than going for distance. The light pattern gets smaller the closer you get to a wall, and it was really quite easy to center the beam on the iron sights using the double sided tape described above. I then loosely mounted my scope to confirm everything was ok up top with the scope and flashlight pattern, and then confirmed it at approx. 100 yards again before I left it alone and let the Acraglass set - all was good. I suppose there would be some kind of jig one could make up, but I honestly don't know if it would improve any on the final result.

Great looking, functional rifle! I've been meaning to get my hands on one of the ruger Alaskans, this has me thinking now....

(Not there's much threat of bears in CT....)

But you can always load it down.....